San Francisco Opera invites you and your family to attend FREE screenings of our Opera-in-an-Hour Movies presented throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. To learn about where you can catch a screening of our family friendly operas, click here.

On Saturday, November 9, we hosted our 2nd free Community Open House, featuring fun events and activities for all ages. It's such a joy to open the doors of the beautiful War Memorial Opera House to droves of people who may have never even been inside before. The 2013 Open House included many diverse presentations and opportunities to connect with opera in new ways, including onstage musical demonstrations; sing-alongs with the San Francisco Opera Chorus and San Francisco Opera Adler Fellows; stage combat workshops; costume, wig and makeup demonstrations; a costume photo booth; an opportunity to meet San Francisco Opera General Director David Gockley; and family activities throughout the opera house lobbies including a scavenger hunt, prop-making, costume crafts, and more, with workshops designed for both adults and families.

Just like the rest of the world, we here at San Francisco Opera are anxiously awaiting the return of "Arrested Development" on Sunday. And so, in honor of this momentous occasion, we looked back at the life and times of the family Bluth and put together 14 ways that opera is like "Arrested Development."

It was finally here, the day we were taking the bus to see the world premiere of The Secret Garden! Sunday, March 10 was a beautiful spring day to rendezvous with friends at the Woodside Park & Ride lot, our meeting point. Gradually, our group of about 60 parents and children of all ages arrived and we boarded the bus to head to Berkeley for an adventure. [Left: Sarah Shafer (Mary) and Michael Kepler Meo (Colin) in The Secret Garden. Photo by Peter DaSilva]

Soprano Sarah Shafer stars as the young Mary Lennox in The Secret Garden premiering March 1 through 10 at Cal Performances. Shafer made her professional debut last season as Barbarina in Le Nozze di Figaro at the Glyndebourne Festival and at the BBC Proms in London’s Royal Albert Hall. Amid a busy rehearsal schedule the rising star took some time out to answer to answer San Francisco Opera’s Five Questions.

We're counting down the days until we open our world-premiere production of Nolan Gasser's The Secret Garden and rehearsals here at San Francisco Opera are about to head over the Bay Bridge to Zellerbach Hall at UC Berkeley. We're thrilled to be co-presenting this work with Cal Performances and we've lined up an exciting young cast who will be bringing this beloved childhood tale to life. Find out a little bit more about the Secret Garden cast in today's blog post.

Introduction

Backstage at San Francisco Opera is a fascinating, fast-moving, mysterious and sacred space for the Company’s singers, musicians, dancers, technicians and production crews. Musical and staging rehearsals are on-going, scenery is loaded in and taken out, lighting cues are set, costumes and wigs are moved around and everything is made ready to receive the audience. From the principal singers, chorus and orchestra musicians to the creative teams for each opera, in addition to the many talented folks who don’t take a bow on stage, this blog offers unique insight, both thought-provoking and light-hearted, into the life backstage at San Francisco Opera.